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Casino Royale

Introducing James Bond: charming, sophisticated, handsome, chillingly ruthless, and licensed to kill. This, the first of Ian Fleming's tales of secret agent 007, finds Bond on a mission to neutralize a lethal, high-rolling Russian operative called "Le Chiffre" by ruining him at the Baccarat table, forcing his Soviet spymasters to "retire" him. It seems that lady luck has sided with 007 when Le Chiffre hits a losing streak. But some people just refuse to play by the rules.

Casino Royale: James Bond, Book 1

For James Bond and the British Secret Service, the stakes couldn't be higher. 007's mission is to neutralize the Russian operative Le Chiffre by ruining him at the baccarat table, forcing his Soviet masters to "retire" him. When Le Chiffre hits a losing streak, Bond discovers his luck is in - that is, until he meets Vesper Lynd, a glamorous agent who might yet prove to be his downfall. This audiobook includes an exclusive bonus interview with Dan Stevens.

Colonel Sun: James Bond, Book 15

The life of secret agent James Bond has begun to fall into a pattern that threatens complacency…until the sunny afternoon when M is kidnapped. The action ricochets across the globe to a volcanic Greek island, where Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the People's Liberation Army of China collaborates with an ex-Nazi atrocity expert in a world-menacing conspiracy. Stripped of all professional aids, Bond faces, unarmed, the monstrous devices of Colonel Sun....

Trigger Mortis: With Original Material by Ian Fleming

Incorporating original, never-before-published material from 007 creator Ian Fleming, New York Times best-selling author Anthony Horowitz returns literary legend James Bond to his 1950s heyday in this exhilarating and dashing thriller.

Zero Minus Ten: James Bond Series

In the Australian desert, a nuclear bomb explodes. There are no survivors and no clues about who has made it or detonated it. In England, two police officers are shot dead when they apprehend a cargo vessel in Portsmouth dock. Vast quantities of heroin are later found on board.

Carte Blanche: The New James Bond Novel

Fresh from Afghanistan, James Bond has been recruited to a new agency. Conceived in the post-9/11 world, it operates independent of Five, Six and the MoD, its very existence deniable. Its aim: to protect the Realm, by any means necessary. The Night Action alert calls Bond from dinner with a beautiful woman. GCHQ has decrypted an electronic whisper about an attack scheduled for later in the week: casualties estimated in the thousands, British interests adversely affected.

Devil May Care

An Algerian drug runner is savagely executed in the desolate outskirts of Paris. This seemingly isolated event leads to the recall of Agent 007 from his sabbatical in Rome and his return to the world of intrigue and danger, where he is most at home. The head of MI6, M, assigns him to shadow the mysterious Dr. Julius Gorner, a power-crazed pharmaceutical magnate whose wealth is exceeded only by his greed.

Tomorrow Never Dies

Elliot Carver - the ultra-rich media mogul - has found a way to "create" news and broadcast it all over the world as it happens. Now he has devised the ultimate plan: to start a war between Great Britain and China. The conflict will reach every television in the world and garner the highest ratings in history. A man who can start a war anytime and anywhere he pleases - and then profit from it - will be the most powerful man in the world. But Carver didn't count on James Bond.

Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica

For two months every year, from 1946 to his death 18 years later, Ian Fleming lived at Goldeneye, the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white-sand beach on Jamaica's stunning north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written there. This audiobook explores the huge influence of Jamaica on the creation of Fleming's iconic postwar hero. The island was for Fleming part retreat from the world, part tangible representation of his values, and part exotic fantasy.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes: The Heirloom Collection

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales are rightly ranked among the seminal works of mystery and detective fiction. Included in this collection are all four full-length Holmes novels and more than forty short masterpieces - from the inaugural adventure A Study in Scarlet to timeless favorites like “The Speckled Band” and more. At the center of each stands the iconic figure of Holmes - brilliant, eccentric, and capable of amazing feats of deductive reasoning.

The Man with the Golden Typewriter

On 16 August 1952, Ian Fleming wrote to his wife, Ann, 'My love, This is only a tiny letter to try out my new typewriter and to see if it will write golden words since it is made of gold'. And he did write golden words: 14 best-selling James Bond books, and an equally energetic flow of letters to his wife, publisher, editors, fans, friends and critics, charting 007's progress....

Solo

It's 1969, and, having just celebrated his 45th birthday, James Bond - British special agent 007 - is summoned to headquarters to receive an unusual assignment. Zanzarim, a troubled West African nation, is being ravaged by a bitter civil war, and M directs Bond to quash the rebels threatening the established regime. Bond's arrival in Africa marks the start of a feverish mission to discover the forces behind this brutal war - and he soon realizes the situation is far from straightforward.

Publisher's Summary

James Bond is challenged by a maniacal superfiend: the world's cleverest, cruelest criminal.

Complications abound. A beautiful golden girl turns up dead, and a friendly game of two-handed canasta turns into a deadly game of survival with ever-rising stakes: 15 billion dollars worth of U.S. government bullion. But 007 knows that Auric Goldfinger's rules remain brutally simple: heads I win, tails you die.

What the Critics Say

"Goldfinger is the most preposterous specimen yet displayed in Mr. Fleming's museum of superfiends...maniacally readable...excellent pieces of descriptive writing." (Observer) "Goldfinger marks a turning point in the series. It separates the early books from the later ones, in that James Bond's character becomes more introspective as Fleming discloses his hero's thoughts more often, thus enabling the reader to dig deeper into Bond's feelings." (Raymond Benson, author of High Time to Kill)

"Goldfinger" is, in my opinion, one of Fleming's better James Bond books. The story is pure hokum, but it's told at such a fast pace that you don't need to worry about it. Raymond Benson called this "The Fleming Sweep" in his "The James Bond Bedside Companion," and it's in full force here. It's that drive that pushes the story along practically daring you to stop reading.

This is also one of the rare occasions where the movie follows the book fairly well. The movie is plotted a little tighter and has more urgency but the book has better characterization- no surprise there.

I'm a fan of Simon Vance's reading of the James Bond canon. He does it with a nice variety of voices and just the right hint of snobbery that Fleming includes in every story. I'm only a couple titles short of having the whole series for the time being, and Goldfinger is one of the best, right behind From Russia With Love, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and (maybe) Thunderball. Vance does a wonderful job with all of them.

If you're wondering if the books are for you this is a good one to test the waters with, even though it's the book that ends the first half of the series. The books that follow have a different tone and villain(s). SMERSH is the primary villain in the first half, directly or indirectly. After Goldfinger SPECTRE takes center stage and the Russians play a much smaller role.

If you've read all the books before (I did over 25 years ago) then this is a nice way to "relive" them. I Definitely recommend the series.

The narrative is terse and witty with a great narrator. Fleming was a journalist before he became a novel writer and he has the ability to craft a great story with necessary, but minimal exposition. I read all the Bond novels in seventh grade and haven't since. Listening to the novels is a lot of fun because you pick up the dry wit of Fleming a lot better.

What did you like best about this story?

There is a great travelogue sequence in the novel. I also like how the plot was unveiled. At no time do we know more than Bond, however, the audience is never treated poorly. Plot points are revealed naturally through exposition. Bond's internal monologue sets up the next set-piece or reveal. Fleming knows how to keep you interested. Even his bad novels, and there are a few of those, have a great narrative flow.

What about Simon Vance’s performance did you like?

I love his ability to do the various voices naturally. There are a great deal of accents and foreign words and phrases in Fleming's books and Vance handles them well. He also does women's voices well, without resorting to major register-changes. Instead, he smooths out the gravel in his voice, gives a hint of accent. I actually prefer the Bond novels in audio form because of Vance. He handles exposition well. He hits beats and knows where punchlines are.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Fleming's novels rarely deal with the emotional lives of characters. In fact, I can only think of three where you may care about someone. What is fun about the novel is that it exists purely in the realm of a fantasy. Great food, drink, sex, cities, danger, gambling. And there is lots of humor. Goldfinger is just a lot of fun. But don't expect to care.

Any additional comments?

The best Bond novels are From Russia, with Love; On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and Diamonds Are Forever. Casino Royale is good, but so violent. If you don't care so much about the character progression, just listen to Russia. Vance reads it well and it is a great Cold War fantasy.

Where does Goldfinger rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I rank it on a scale of 1 to 10, about 8.5

What did you like best about this story?

I am comparing this story to the movie I saw back in the sixties. For a change, the movie actually stuck fairly close to the book, with some Chauvinistic deletions. Certain subject matterwas not transferred from book to movie. I love the suspense and the pure evil of Goldfinger. The scheme was well thought out!

Which character – as performed by Simon Vance – was your favorite?

Goldfinger.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

The parts of the book I enjoyed the most were unexpected, probably because of how those parts differed from the movie that I've seen several times (though not recently). The James Bond presented here was more human and "rough", hardly the polished playboy of the Sean Connery-portrayed Bond of the movies, and I liked that better. More like the Daniel Craig Bond than the Connery Bond. Sadly, he's more chauvanistic than the character even in the 1964 movie, but I can write that off as a product of the author's time and place.

Nevertheless, it's still an enjoyable secret agent romp with a good villain, good Bond, and a typical happy ending. The narration was very good, and definitely helped keep the story moving.

The action-oriented espionage classics by Ian Fleming are always an enjoyable read, or in this case, listen. The audio is great, and the narrator's voice and accent create an enthralling, believable production of the literature.